


The Patient

by bulletandsophia



Series: Endless [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:59:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulletandsophia/pseuds/bulletandsophia
Summary: It’s been one month today, when her life has changed—when Jon Snow has come and then left her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for all your lovely comments and I will find time to reply to each and every one! But for now, here's the next part of the series. Warning, this latest installment is darker than the previous ones. 
> 
> This is the second to the last part of the series. :)

The leaves have started to turn yellow and orange and brown—gracefully falling down from their branches even with just the slight blow of the wind.

St. Samwell General Hospital is unusually quiet today and Sansa takes this opportunity to stealth her way through the emergency nurses to take the lift and into the hospital’s rooftop. It has always been her favorite place to think.

Leaving her coat and stethoscope behind, the rooftop is empty except for her and her unlighted cigarette stick. Sansa twirls it in her hand, tempted to light it finally and yet feeling guilty because the last time she did, back in the University, she coughed up feeling her entire soul wanted to get out.

But perhaps, that is what she wants to happen now.

It’s been one month today, when her life has changed—when Jon Snow has come and then left her.

Sansa twirls the cigarette stick again.

It bothers her that no other staff in the emergency remembered what had happened. Perhaps, the almost everyday occurrence of death in their profession almost made them dumb to the idea of life being taken away. Perhaps, Jon Snow was just another number to complete their statistics. Perhaps, Jon Snow did not matter to them at all.

As in truth, he did not matter to her before.

Only, they brought him in one day in the emergency room where she was finishing her nightly shift, the first response team scrambling to tell the details of the accident as they rolled him to the nearest empty procedure room but Sansa—as what she was trained to do—focused mainly on trying to save his life. His clothes were drenched, blood ran down from his head to his cheeks, and scratches scatter all over his neck and arms.

“Car sped through the bridge and into the river. Nasty wreck.” she heard one of the uniformed men say. “Lucky the people in the cabin nearby heard the crash else we would not even know anything happened in the highway.”

Curious incident, Sansa remembers telling herself then, but quickly dissipated the thoughts and focused on her work. She was able to revive him in the third attempt. He sputtered more water all over her coat and shoes but the nurses were already calming him down as she began her work with his cuts and bruises.

He didn’t wake fully until four more hours after. Her shift has ended then but Sansa, peculiar as it was, stayed and waited for a loved one to come and visit him—maybe even just to arrange paper works.

But no one came.

And she has such a weak heart, doesn’t she? Because despite the insistence of the nurses for her to finally get some sleep, Sansa still found herself stepping in his room, almost three am on her watch, and waited for a miracle, feeling sorry (endeared?) and oddly lonely at the sight of him looking so small on the hospital bed.

So, she waited for him to wake up or for someone to show up; or maybe just waited for any signs of reassurance that he will still continue to breath in the next hour or so.

Sansa takes a deep breath as she remembers this, the moment still freshly stinging she feels as if it was only yesterday that it happened. She looks around, the rooftop is still empty, the sky is still gray and pale. Though from afar she can see the expanse of the woods surrounding the hospital and their reddening and yellowing leaves aggressively competing with the color of her own hair.

Jon told her he loved her hair.

“Like my wife’s.” he murmured during that early morning. He woke up, to Sansa’s surprise, just when she finally decided to leave the hospital.

She asked for his name and he hoarsely replied and when she felt like he could go on for more questioning, Sansa attempted to get more information or contact person she could share with the staff.

“Where is she?” she asked quietly, finally sitting down again. “Your wife?”

Jon blinked at her then looked away. “She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.” 

He didn’t respond for a while but after struggling a deep breath, he whispered back. “Me too.”

“Do you know someone else we could inform—”

Gruffly, he responded. “ _None._ ”

He further looked small in that moment and his beard did not cover up the pain etched on his face. Sansa wondered if the pain was from his bruises but he didn’t look the type who hurt from anything physical. Slightly feeling compelled as his doctor, she tried to engage him more and not waste the opportunity where he was still alert.

Sansa asked the harder questions.

“Do you know what happened to you?” she inquired softly.

Jon looked back almost stoically and said, “Yes. I ran my car towards the bridge.”

“Yes, you did.” Sansa solemnly nodded. And then after a while, “May I know why?”

He did not speak again and tried not to look her way. Sansa studied him and watched as his eyes roamed anywhere but her face—undecided perhaps on where to place such a stranger trying to probe his life. In the quietness and in her slight exhaustion, Sansa tried to exert more patience in his silence. A frown also started to form on his face Sansa knew was not due to the purpling bruises and bloodied bandages. Because she believed, even without the pain of the accident, Jon Snow was _hurting_. And she cannot deny wanting to be more by his side.

Curious, truly.

It was not until he spoke the most honest of words that Sansa decided she will not let him further deteriorate.

“I could not save her...” was what he said first. “... save  _them._ ”

_Them._

Fear ran through her as she clarified. “Who, Jon?”

When he finally turned to look at her, she could clearly see the loneliness and the despair. It made her heart ache.

“My wife… and son.” he croaked. “ _Unborn son._ ”

“What happened to them?”

“ _Fire._ ”

In the next few days, Sansa was able to finally make Jon feel more relaxed with his pallid surroundings. She fed him, changed his bandages, and checked up on him every hour or so that it made some of the nurses tease her. It was not part of a doctor’s job description but Sansa cannot just help herself. She and Jon fell into a comfortable ritual that one day, when she was changing his bandages, he started to confide in her more.

“Eddard.” he whispered with a wince as she helped him lay back on the bed. “That was supposed to be my son’s name.”

“It’s a lovely name.” she told him truthfully.

Somberly he looked up at her and responded, “My wife thought so too.”

 _Wife_.

Sansa takes a breath and clasps her hand together, closing her eyes and hating herself for the slight jealousy. The cold breeze of autumn does not help alleviate any of her feelings at all—as if Jon died only to pass his loneliness to her.

Angrily, she folds the cigarette stick and throws it away, watching it land on the concrete floor not too far from where she is.

 _You can’t be jealous of a dead man’s dead wife, Sansa,_ she tells herself. _Stop being ridiculous._

And yet—it’s been one month today. How can it be ridiculous?

One month since he went missing from his room only for her to find him standing in this exact same spot, looking over the view, the breeze caressing his face, dancing in between the curls of his hair. He looked healthier (thanks to her care) and yet pale.

Tired.

Miserable.

She spoke his name when she neared and then he turned to her, there was a sad smile on his lips.

“My wife,” he started. “…was also named Sansa _._ ”

And something like a jolt hit her. Perhaps if she had known, she might have stayed away. Maybe her presence while he was trying to heal did not make him feel any better.

_Sansa. Sansa. Sansa._

What a cursed name.

“I—I didn’t know.” she breathed.

He laughed lightly, the first time he did so, and shook his head. “Of course, you don’t.”

Then he gazed back almost pointedly he seemed like a different person. “ _You never remember_.”

“Jon, I—”

He shook his head again, turning his gaze back to the woods. “But I guess that should not matter. You’ve sacrificed yourself for me once.” Then he turned to face her again. “Maybe it’s my turn to save you now.”

“I don’t understand, Jon. Please, let’s just back to your room.” Sansa almost shouted, desperate for someone to find them but none came.

“No,” he replied, determined more than ever.

Then, to Sansa’s shock, he climbed the narrow edge of the rooftop and stood, his hospital gown billowing with the wind. It was a terrible thing to see and yet Sansa felt her knees weaken with some sort of elation as if Jon craved for this moment.

This freedom.

“Jon, please. Get down from there.”

He shook his head again. “I tried to end it when I crashed my car to the bridge only to wake up with you saving me again.”

“Jon…” she can almost hear herself wail.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you, Sansa?” he frowned at her. “But I don’t want to dream of fire only to lose you over and over again. I want this to end.”

“No, please—”

“This is the only way _._ ”

He took a deep breath and he kept his gaze at her with an expression she can only decipher as lonely and longing—a mixture of a certain misery that had yet to discover some happiness.

“I’ve said this to you a thousand times before, in different lifetimes, but I never tire of saying it,” he smiled at her with perhaps the remaining warmth he had. “ _I love you, Sansa._ ”

Sansa felt her tears roll and tried to blink it away.

And when she did, and as if he waited for her to do so, abruptly, like he did not even need to think twice, that nothing would stop him from doing so; not her, not her tears, not even her pleas, Jon stepped over the edge.

Almost too willingly. 

The investigation after was far more sickening, with doctors and policemen declaring Jon Snow mentally unstable; with neighbors testifying to his strange behaviors and strange stories, with evidences of a wife’s death in some fire that turned out to be nonexistent.

No traces of anything else could be found about Jon Snow. And yet, why does Sansa feel weighted by him until today, when none of it should have mattered anymore.

She is a doctor. Death is something she almost sees every day.

“Thought I’d find you here.” someone says behind her.

Sansa turns and watches as the woman picks up her disposed cigarette stick.

“I knew you were not the type to smoke. When you asked one from the nurse I thought I was going crazy. And believe me, I’ve seen crazy.”

Sansa sighs. “Hello, _Melissandre._ ”

Melissandre slowly walks towards her, hands in her coat pocket, eyes seizing as always. “Hello, Dr. Stark.” 

“I told you to just call me—”

“I know, _Sansa_.” she almost huffs. “I was just teasing. What are colleagues for, right? And believe me, calling _you_ a doctor still leaves a foreign taste in my tongue.”

It takes a moment before Sansa feels the courage to finally break the silence that hovers. “Are they in need of me in the emergency?”

Melissandre shakes her head. Then, “I wanted to speak with you.”

A few days after Jon’s death, Melissandre showed up and was supposed to take over the emergency ward for Sansa and the vacation leave the hospital offered after the _stressful_ incident. Sansa declined evidently but still, Melissandre decided to stay.

Raising an eyebrow, Sansa asks. “About what?”

“You know well.”

Sansa sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to talk about _him_.”

“Melissandre…”

“Are you not curious why you don’t want to, though? Surely, he’s not the most difficult patient you’ve had.”

“He was _not_ a difficult patient.”

“I’ve heard.”

Shifting her gaze back to the older doctor, Sansa almost desperately asks, “ _What do you want?_ ”

Melisandre’s smile is testing and almost bordering teasing, condescending. Sansa cannot fathom how she could find enjoyment in her agony.

“Nothing,” the other doctor finally replies. “I just want to make sure you are alright. Coping, if I must say.”

“ _I am fine._ ”

Another teasing smirk. “Of course, you are.”

Silence runs through the rooftop except for the far away grazing and shifting of the leaves from the woods below.

“You know,” Sansa eyes Melissandre curiously. “You never once mentioned why you stayed.”

The older lady smiles. “Only the gods can dictate our fates. They spoke to me and told me to stay here.”

Sansa represses the urge to roll her eyes. “And what exactly did the gods say?”

“They said I should look after you.”

The shock is minimal but still palpable. Sansa frowns at Melissandre and the oddity and intensity, if not even pointedness, of her words.

Still, the doctor continues, now staring mindlessly and dreamily to something far away. “ _Winter is coming_.”

Then, without notice, she grabs Sansa’s arm as if in warning. “Now with Jon gone, you only have yourself to rely on when the truth comes.”

“Melissandre, I don’t—” Sansa tries to pull her arm free but the woman only grips her tighter, eyes also almost piercing her.

“When the first snow falls, you will remember.” Melissandre speaks again. “And you will be unprepared.”

Sansa is left speechless when Melissandre leaves her almost panting and gaping. Sansa can only hear the nonsense in the older woman's words and yet Jon’s voice also suddenly echoes in her head.

 _You never remember_.

She tries to ignore and disregard it all. She does not need any unwarranted fear and oddities that can never be explained by reason or science—and especially not today, of all the days, when the scars of witnessing Jon’s death have seemed to wound themselves fresh again.

So no, she will not fall into any fallacies or make-believe. Jon has chosen his own fate and decided to see his own end. 

Not some gods.

And Sansa knows, she will decide for her own.

But later that night, in her lonesome and lethargy in her apartment— reminiscing of her small ‘hurray!’ when she found out Melissandre’s finally decided to leave St. Samwell’s just a few hours after their unfortunate encounter on the rooftop—Sansa dreams of a large castle covered in soft snow. In the courtyard, there is also a large white tree with red leaves and beside it is a man overtly familiar; a white wolf resting at his feet.

When he turns and finally sees her, he smiles as if he has been waiting for that moment his whole life.

Feeling as if she does too, Sansa gives him a smile back.

* * *

 


End file.
